Catherine Lowe Reacts to April Fools' Day Backlash After Pretending to Be Pregnant, Jokes, "I Love Burgers!"

Critics said her post was insensitive towards women battling infertility

By Corinne Heller Apr 02, 2015 4:15 PMTags
Sean Lowe, Catherine GiudiciABC/Rick Rowell

It wasn't an April Fools' Day burrito, but it was a a food baby.

The Bachelor alum Catherine Lowe, wife of  season 17 star Sean Lowe and formerly known as Catherine Giudice, is speaking out following backlash over her recent and comment April Fools' Day prank: Pretending she's pregnant.

Catherine had on Wednesday posted on her Instagram photo showing a woman from the neck up with a baby bump, with the caption, "17 weeks :)," sparking speculation that she and Sean were expecting their first child. The couple's rep confirmed to E! News that it was meant to be an April Fools' joke. While the picture was "liked" more than 37,000 times, several readers commented that if she was indeed not pregnant, that she was being insensitive to women struggling with infertility.

On Thursday, Catherine posted a caricature of a woman with a massive burger in her stomach, saying, "I LOVE BURGERS! I LOVE PRANKS! I LOVE LIFE! About my earlier post, it was intended to be lighthearted and fun and certainly not insensitive. My heart goes out to all the women struggling with fertility."

Several readers backed her up.

"I thought it was funny," said @amybblack70. "People are way too serious!!"

"People need a dose of humor," said @loansofa. "Geez. Ppl are so sensitive nowadays, it's pathetic! Keep up your humor and light-heartedness, it's much needed in the world we live in."

Sean also commented on the backlash.

"Social media. Is it a great way to connect with others or was it created by Satan himself? This is a question I often ask myself," he wrote on his Patheos blog.

Sean said Catherine received "literally hundreds if not thousands of comments" criticizing her over the post and that his wife "has a huge heart for women who are struggling with fertility." The picture was posted because she frequently "gets flooded with comments from people who tell her she looks pregnant," he said.

"So that was the genesis of yesterday's post," he wrote. "It was playing off of the bombardment of pregnancy comments she reads every day and messing with those who post them."

More than 6.7 U.S. women between ages 15 and 44, or 10.9 percent of the female population, struggle with infertility, the CDC says.

Other celebrities who joked about expecting a baby on April Fools' Day included Hailey Baldwin and Whiplash and Insurgent actor Miller Teller. They did not include photos and pretty much no respondent seemed to believe them.

Catherine, 28, has stirred controversy via Instagram before. In February 2014, she was criticized over a photo she posted of herself with a friend with the caption, "New on IG: The Selective Chocolate Bar Filter." She later deleted the pic.

On The Bachelor season 17, Sean, now 31, had picked Catherine as the winner and proposed to her on the show. The two  wed in January 2014in a lavish California wedding ceremony that aired live as a The Bachelor special. They are among few couples who met while filming shows from the dating series franchise to remain together.

Season 19 concluded earlier this month with a proposal by star and farmer Chris Soules to winner Whitney Bischoff, who worked as a fertility nurse.